‘BRTS service will not make dent in AMTS income’ officials

“We were anticipating that the free ride would cause a dent in our income on this route. But to our surprise,there is not as much of an impact as we had apprehended because the passenger load has increased in the past few months,” said a senior AMTS official.

He added that despite BRT buses ferrying passengers for free,the circular routes buses on 201 and 203 continued doing good business.

Income from shuttle buses on routes numbers 201 and 301 fell in August as compared to July this year,even thought it had showed improvement over the corresponding period of 2008.

AMTS chairman Pravin Patel said there was no reason to panic because there would be no direct clash between two sets of passenger traffic — on BRT and AMTS. He said there might be some drop in number of passengers due to free travel on BRT route.

The average daily income on 201 went up from Rs 3,114 in July to Rs 3,408 in August but in the case of 201-shuttle it fell from Rs 4,390 in July to Rs 3,385

in August.

Again for 301,it went up from Rs 3,338 to Rs 3,688 in August but in 301-shuttle,the income saw sharp fall from Rs 4,786 in July to Rs 4,279 in August.

Thus,officials agreed there will be some impact on AMTS fortunes once BRTS is introduced. “But then we will be able to divert our additional buses from overlapping routes to newer routes,” said Patel.

Deputy Municipal Commissioner U C Padia said the passengers using BRT service come to around 17,000 a day on both ways. “If the AMTS is not affected despite the complementary BRT service,this means that the latter is going to be a big success.”